Which Solar Company Boasts the Highest Market Cap?

Coming in with a $6.92 billion market cap (the total dollar market value of the company’s outstanding shares) is First Solar, the cadmium-telluride thin-film solar panel builder and project engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company.

In the most recent quarter, First Solar set a new world record for CdTe cell efficiency at 21 percent, logged a full-fleet average efficiency of 14.0 percent and generated operating cash flow of $118 million. It’s now at the top of the U.S. solar market cap hit parade.

Coming in second, and soon to be a silicon panel manufacturer, is fast-growing financier and installer SolarCity, which just logged a record quarter for bookings and deployment.

Market capitalization of U.S. solar firms:

First Solar

CdTe module maker, EPC

$6.92 billion

SolarCity

Residential PV installer, financier

$6.5 billion

SunPower

c-Si module maker, EPC

$5.98 billion

SunEdison

c-Si module maker, EPC

$5.6 billion

TerraForm Power

SunEdison solar project YieldCo

$3.25 billion

GT Advanced

PV panel manufacturing equipment

$2.23 billion

Strong solar stock prices are helping to accelerate the market. Notably, the top four companies on this list are vertically integrated, and five participate in the consistent yield of distributed generation projects. Recently buoyant stock prices have allowed these companies to be as acquisitive as needed and are helping increase solar adoption and reduce costs. (First Solar acquired TetraSun’s c-Si technology; SolarCity has acquired Silevo’s c-Si business, Zep, Paramount and Common Assets.)

SunPower is essentially capacity-constrained and looking to add hundreds of megawatts of panel production. Other panel vendors are adding capacity for this next market phase. But clearly, the stock market favors the downstream or integrated solar approach rather than pure-play hardware manufacturers.

That $3 billion to $7 billion range that included a cluster of solar firms is in the range of E*Trade ($6.1 billion), Pepco Holdings ($6.7 billion), a utility in the mid-Atlantic that serves more than 2 million customers, or Hawaii’s utility holding company HEI ($3.48 billion).

Apple is the market cap leader at $574.6 billion.

These heady valuations could set the bar for solar IPO aspirants such as Vivint Solar (S-1 filed) or Sunrun (rumored to be considering an IPO).

Prior to joining Greentech Media, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields. He also was the publisher of the Venture Power newsletter, a subscription-only newsletter covering venture-capital investment in renewable energy.